


Awkward Conversations.

by deankeptthecoat



Series: Destiel Oneshots [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean is sad, M/M, One Shot, almost mjd, i never know how to tag these, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 12:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17304677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deankeptthecoat/pseuds/deankeptthecoat
Summary: Castiel had been in a lot of weird, uncomfortable situations. Like the time Gabriel tried to convince him that he was actually an adopted human and that his wings are fake, or the time Dean tried to feed him dog food, or most of all the time that he found Claire curled up under the couch crying hysterically to a song about faking your death because “that’s exactly what they did!”But in all of his millions of years of living, he had never been put in a situation where he was standing in a bedroom staring down at his own body. He’d honestly never expected it to happen and, naturally, had never prepared himself for it.And yet, here he was.





	Awkward Conversations.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my friend Emily, aka @underestimatemethatwillbefun on Tumblr, and she's a sweetheart and has supported my writing from the beginning so if you have Tumblr go give her some love!! Anyway, I promise this has a happy ending, so just... bear with haha

Castiel had been in a lot of weird, uncomfortable situations. Like the time Gabriel tried to convince him that he was actually an adopted human and that his wings are fake, or the time Dean tried to feed him dog food, or most of all the time that he found Claire curled up under the couch crying hysterically to a song about faking your death because “that’s exactly what they did!”

But in all of his millions of years of living, he had never been put in a situation where he was standing in a bedroom staring down at his own body. He’d honestly never expected it to happen and, naturally, had never prepared himself for it.

And yet, here he was.

The last thing he remembered was sneaking up on a broken down cabin where there was a pack of werewolves hiding out. Somewhere along the way he must have been beaten pretty horribly if the next moment he woke up was this. Castiel had been knocked out in the figurative sense that he was unconscious, but never in the sense that he was literally shoved out of his own body by a simple blow to the head. This was nothing like exorcisms or leaving a vessel. When Cas looked down he saw his vessel, and he would have sworn it was just him if it weren’t for the fact that when he looked up he could once again see himself lying down.

He… well his body, was lying down stiffly in Dean’s bed. Yes, Dean’s bed. It wasn’t that weird to him when Dean had carried Cas to his bedroom without a second thought since he was in there almost every night while Dean slept. Sam had thought it was odd but Dean had snapped at him to go find something to help before he could ask more questions.

Cas spent the first day trying to shout at everyone in the entire bunker to let them know he was sort of awake. No one could hear him. If it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t have a corporeal form at the moment, he would probably find his throat aching or his voice to be lost after all the shouting.

The second day, he tried to climb back into his own body. It was surprisingly difficult. Slapping his face to wake himself up didn’t work- his hand just went right through. Sitting down and focusing and meditating didn’t work. He had really hoped it would, at least then he could tell Dean how he was basically Doctor Strange. Lying down on the bed and trying to sink back into his own body didn’t work either. It felt like lying down in stew. Castiel didn’t like it and got back up as soon as he felt that, so maybe it would actually work, but no way was he going to try it again. By five pm he was completely out of ideas as to how to get back  into his body, and it didn’t look like it would be happening on it’s own anytime soon.

He tried throwing his trench coat in hopes it would properly materialize and at least offer as some sort of sign to Dean. When he took it off, it didn’t become solid. It did the exact opposite. As soon as it left his hands the dirty coat became covered in patches of transparency. The were constantly shifting, constantly fading back in and back out. He stared at it for a minute, glancing over once or twice to Dean to see if he was noticing this. He wasn’t. Of course. Castiel tried to reach over to grab the coat and put it back on, but just before he could get it, one of the patches grew and consumed the entire coat. In the blink of an eye, it was like it never existed.

So he was stuck, and couldn’t even let them know he was alive. Fantastic.

Sam didn’t seem to sweat it too much.

“Dean, you and I have both been knocked out for over a week at a time,” he had said cooly. It was the evening of the second day, and Dean had hardly left his room. Sam had walked in to find his brother pacing anxiously, glancing back at Castiel every other second.

“Well neither of us are angels.” Dean retorted. “Did you find any books about this?”

“About holy comas?” Sam said. “No. But I did find some apple pie in the fridge. Eat something and calm down. Cas will be fine.”

Cas would have told Sam that he felt far from fine, but after spending the entire first day shouting and trying to wreck auditory havoc, he’d learned that no one could hear him. Dean reluctantly left the room and got food, but brought his plate and beer with him, because he “wanted to be there when Cas woke up.”

The afternoon of the third day, after sleeping in a very uncomfortable position, Dean brought in a pile of books on angels. He’d read over them a thousand times before and Castiel knew that he knew that he would find nothing, but Cas also knew that there was nothing that would stop him from double checking. If he had been able to turn the pages he would have even helped look, as fruitless a garden as it might have been. Instead he sat on the bed facing Dean, leaning against the wall and watching.

Dean kept shaking something out of nervousness. It was either his hand or fingers, or his leg or foot, depending on the position he was sat in, but something was drumming rapidly against something and he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. He kept biting his lip too, and scrunching up his face in frustration with every dead end chapter he read. Dean fell asleep in another uncomfortable position that night, this time slumping down on the desk. Cas sat on the floor right below the desk. For that night, he just watched Dean sleep and for a fleeting second it all seemed ordinary. If only he was solid; he would carry Dean to his bed, or at least give him a pillow and blanket.

The morning of the fourth day, Sam came in once again with some more food. Dean groaned when he felt the crook in his neck.

“Dean,” Sam said when he pushed the food aside to make room for another book. “Give it a rest, you know there’s nothing in there.”

“We don’t know that!”

“Yeah, we do. We’ve read those books a million times.” Sam carried all the books he could fit in his arms back to the library. When he came back he saw Dean staring solemnly at the floor. Cas wasn’t sure if Sam noticed, but Dean had started drumming his fingers on the wooden surface of the desk once again. “Dean…?”

“It’s been four days.” There was barely emotion in his voice. The bitterness of it cut through the air.

“Maybe he was exorcised.” Sam said. He was grasping at straws.

“He was hit on the back of the neck, Sammy, not chanted at!” Dean raised his voice, and Sam flinched. “He would be back by now if he was exorcised…”

“I know, but we’ve got to consider everything.” he said hushed.

“No.”

“Dean…”

“No, because then we’ve got to consider that he’s-” Dean cut himself off but everyone knew exactly what he was going to say.

Sam left the room after that.

The fifth day, Cas began to wonder if he really was a ghost. He spent the day trying to summon the energy to push things over- anything. The random knick knacks on Dean’s dresser, the salt shakers in the kitchen, even the pillow propping his (real) head up, but nothing seemed to work. When he tried to touch anything, his hand would become transparent, fading back to opaque a few seconds after he would move his hand away. By seven that evening he felt just the same as before, if not a bit more frustrated at the situation. No reaper had ever come for him, and the Empty was nowhere in sight. At least he knew he wasn’t dead.

On the sixth day, Cas started doubting what he’d learned the other day. He looked down to see his legs were fading in and out of existence in sections, just like his trench coat had done. He would be lying if he said he didn’t start panicking a little bit. Or a lot.

“Dean,” Cas said cautiously. “Dean, something’s wrong.”

Dean, of course, didn’t hear a word. He was still sitting at the desk, pouring over books about ghosts. He looked like he was going to pass out at any second.

By eleven that same night, the splotches had moved up to his hips and he no longer had visible feet. Cas had probably sped up the process by pacing around the hallway in a panic, trying to find a way out of this. Nothing came to mind.

He came running back into the room when he heard a loud crash, Sam unknowingly ran right behind him.

“What happened?” They both said in unison, not that Dean heard Cas.

The mountain of books lay on the floor, strewn about in disarray. They’d falled. Dean was still at the desk as he had been for the past thirty six hours, his hands running through his hair. His breathing was heavy.

“Nothing’s gonna fucking work, Sam.” he said without looking up.

“We just have to give him a bit more time,” Sam said. He was desperate to get Dean to calm down.

“It’s been a week!” Dean shouted.

Sam sighed.

“Let’s just… clean this up?” He nodded to the chaos of books that had been heaved across the floor.

“How will that help?” Dean shouted again. “Tell me how cleaning up some fucking books is going to get Cas to wake up. If you aren’t gonna wake him up yourself, then fuck off.”

“Dean…”

“Fuck off!”

Sam finally relented and left the room, closing the door loudly in passive aggression. Dean must have realized he had been beyond harsh because he looked at the door regretfully. For a moment it looked like he was going to go apologize to Sam but instead he looked down at Cas’s body.

“Cas, c’mon…” He muttered. Dean grabbed Cas’ hand and Cas thought he felt a small jolt. He looked down and saw his hand was afflicted, fading in and out in shapeless blotches, and when he looked a bit further he found that his entire lower legs were completely gone, and although he could still feel them just fine, he was disappearing faster.

“Wake up buddy.” Dean muttered again.

“Dean,” Cas said. He was still staring at his hands and maybe it was just his eyes playing tricks on him but he could have sworn that the spots were getting more rapid. “Dean, I am awake.”

“I don’t know if you can hear me, but…”

“I can hear you, Dean, I need you to hear me!” Cas walked over to him.

“I can’t… I can’t stand this.” Cas fell on what would have been his knees, but his entire legs were gone, and the spots were climbing farther and farther up his arms.. “I can’t stand seeing you just lying here. I- I don’t even know if you’re alive or dead, and I sure as fuck hope it isn’t the last one because then I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.”

“Dean…” He was suddenly overrun with fatigue. Cas leaned against the desk.

“Cas…” he said, his voice entirely forlorn. Cas had never seen that look on Dean’s face before. It was pained, certainly, but it was deeper than that. It was brimful with pure misery. He had his mouth slightly open, like he had a million words to say but either didn’t know how to say them or just couldn’t bring himself too. His eyes weren’t hopeless and dull, but they weren’t their usually sparkling green. They were intensely focused on Cas’s other face, and he just couldn’t figure out what they were saying. “I can’t lose you again, and not like this. I can’t let it just be some stupid fucking vampire that did you in forever.”

The splotches were up to his neck now, and he officially had only half a body. Dematerializing, it had a distinct feeling of pins and needles. He didn’t have any energy to futilely respond to Dean’s pleas. He felt like someone was tugging on his head but he couldn’t budge.

“Please, Cas, I need you back. Last time you… I… God, you don’t even know.” Dean said. “I’ve never told you what I’m like when you’re gone.”

His hips

“I’m a mess. Ask Sam if you don’t believe me. I’m a fucking mess without you, it’s so goddamn pathetic.”

His torso.

“I barely even know why, it’s not like I haven’t lost people before. Hell, you’ve been… dead, a few times. We all have.”

Everything up to his shoulders, with the exception of most of his right arm, but it was so covered in the splotches it looked he had some weird disease.

“I just…”

His hand.

“I need you, Cas.”

His elbow.

“I don’t think I can live without you.”

He reached what would have been his right arm up to Dean in one final last ditch effort to get his attention.

“Cas, I love you.”

And that was it.

For five seconds.

Cas sprang up, gasping for air. When he came to his senses, he was sitting on Dean’s bed, and this time he was actually in his body.

“I’m back,” he said, barely believing it, as he looked down at his hand to make sure it was true. It was.

That was when he realized Dean was still holding his hand. Dean clearly wasn’t aware. He was staring wide-eyed at Cas like it was the first time they’d met. As the color returned to his eyes, Dean smiled wide and pulled Cas into a tight hug.

“Oh, god, I thought you were gone,” he said, his speech airy. It sounded like he was taking his first breath in months.

“Yeah, I… I thought I was too,” Cas looked back down at his hands just to double check. He still seemed safe. “I guess I’m… wait.”

He stared up at Dean.

“You good?” Dean said cautiously.

That was when it hit Cas that Dean had no clue that he had seen the past week of events, let alone that he had heard every single word of what Dean had just told him.

Cas knew exactly what to do.

“Go apologize to your brother, Dean. You’ve been yelling at him every day for a week.” Cas smiled.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Dean. He still wasn’t catching on. Idiot.

“I’m fine, but go say sorry.”

“Alright, alright.” He got up and started towards the door. When he was halfway through the door he turned back around to look at Cas. He looked suspicious. “Wait, how did you know that?”

“Go!”

Dean speed walked the rest of the way out of the room. Before he could get down and out of the hall, Cas shouted after him, “Love you too!”

From around the corner of the bunker he heard Dean say, “Shit! He knows!”

Yeah.

He knew.

**Author's Note:**

> Go check out my [tumblr](https://deankeptthecoat.tumblr.com/)! I'm more active there and reblog a lot of other fics I like, too.
> 
> Feel free to bully me if my writing causes you pain. Anything will do. Kudos, comments, reblogs, and anonymous messages about my fics give me the validation I am starved of <33


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